Inorganic Nanocarriers Overcoming Multidrug Resistance for Cancer Theranostics

Abstract

Cancer multidrug resistance (MDR) could lead to therapeutic failure of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and has become one of the main obstacles to successful cancer treatment. Some advanced drug delivery platforms, such as inorganic nanocarriers, demonstrate a high potential for cancer theranostic to overcome the cancer‐specific limitation of conventional low‐molecular‐weight anticancer agents and imaging probes. Specifically, it could achieve synergetic therapeutic effects, demonstrating stronger killing effects to MDR cancer cells by combining the inorganic nanocarriers with other treatment manners, such as RNA interference and thermal therapy. Moreover, the inorganic nanocarriers could provide imaging functions to help monitor treatment responses, e.g., drug resistance and therapeutic effects, as well as analyze the mechanism of MDR by molecular imaging modalities. In this review, the mechanisms involved in cancer MDR and recent advances of applying inorganic nanocarriers for MDR cancer imaging and therapy are summarized. The inorganic nanocarriers may circumvent cancer MDR for effective therapy and provide a way to track the therapeutic processes for real‐time molecular imaging, demonstrating high performance in studying the interaction of nanocarriers and MDR cancer cells/tissues in laboratory study and further shedding light on elaborate design of nanocarriers that could overcome MDR for clinical translation.

Shape-Controlled Synthesis of Luminescent Hemoglobin Capped Hollow Porous Platinum Nanoclusters and their Application to Catalytic Oxygen Reduction and Cancer Imaging

“…When the CD44-overexpressing HeLa cells are incubated with Pt NCs/HA, strong blue fluorescence observed inside the cells suggesting internalization of Pt NCs/HA through the HA receptor-mediated endocytosis, thereby increasing the amount of Pt NCs in HeLa cancer cells (Fig. 7f ) 26 , 75 , 76 . In contrast, the fluorescence intensity from the uptake of Pt NCs without the HA was insignificant compared to Pt NCs/HA even after 6 h of incubation, probably due to non-specific interaction (Fig.…”

Self‐Assembled Bifunctional Peptide as Effective Drug Delivery Vector with Powerful Antitumor Activity

“…Particles with a small size (<200 nm) can easily extravasate to extravascular tumor site due to the EPR effect. [51] On the other hand, the bifunctional peptide used in this study can improve its tumor tissue-specific targeting due to tumortargeting sequences-NGRRGD and HAV. Therefore, DOC/ peptide NPs may enhance drug accumulation in tumor tissues, and decrease drug extravasation from normal vessels into normal tissues.…”

NanoTRAIL‐Oncology: A Strategic Approach in Cancer Research and Therapy

“…Interestingly, superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) with both therapeutic ( Figure ) and imaging functions also act as excellent nanocarriers for TRAIL delivery . In a TRAIL/SPION nanocomplex system, magnetic hyperthermia generated from SPIONs effectively triggered the rapid release of TRAIL and enhanced its cytotoxicity in a TRAIL‐resistant U87 MG xenografted tumor model via caspase‐3 and ‐8 active apoptosis . At the same time, the therapeutic responses could be monitored by long‐term magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) …”